For eight months, Northampton did not have a permanent police chief. In August, the city hired interim chief and longtime department member John Cartledge to lead the department, who was chosen from a pool of just four candidates. Similarly, Amherst selected its current chief from a group of only 11 candidates who submitted letters of interest.

While these departments eventually persevered through a dearth of interested parties, the struggle of police departments to attract a robust pool of qualified candidates for executive and other positions is a phenomenon that stretches far beyond Massachusetts.

“There’s been a massive turnover in executive positions at police agencies since 2020 with the implementation of police reform,” said Eric Gillis, chief of the Agawam Police Department and president of the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association. “The ability to attract new officers has been difficult. … On a national level, at every meeting I’ve attended, recruitment and retention is the main topic of discussion.”

This difficulty experienced from the local to the national level applies to all positions, from executive officers to entry-level ones. Gillis said that in Agawam, he’s noticed that finding qualified candidates to fill vacancies has been much harder in recent years. But he noted that even larger police agencies are grappling with the same issue.

“The State Police in the past, when they’d offer an entrance exam, over 10,000 would sit for it, and now it’s less than 3,000,” he said. “And just because you sit the exam doesn’t mean you make it through the hiring process, which is exhaustive to say the least.”

The decrease in quality candidates available for consideration has come as a shock to many departments, and comes with many possible explanations. For Northampton, Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra said in a previous interview with the Gazette that Cartledge’s presence as a strong internal candidate could have dissuaded other potential candidates from applying for the position, resulting in the meager four applicants.

Amherst’s current Police Chief Gabriel Ting also was an internal candidate, selected after almost a year spent serving as the interim chief, which could have played a role in what Town Manager Paul Bockelman called a “strong but small pool” of applicants at a Cuppa Joe meeting in January, which prompted the town to attempt to widen interest in the role.

But not all agencies have strong internal candidates lined up for their top leadership positions, and still they experience difficulty attracting a slate of competitive applicants. Recruitment and retention are always complex, but those familiar with the field of criminal justice agree that major shifts occurred in law enforcement across the country after the death of George Floyd in 2020 produced widespread outcry for greater police accountability and reform.

“It’s a reflection of what’s going on in the industry,” said Mark Williams, East Longmeadow police chief and second vice president of the Western Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association. “Expectations have changed. Legislation and police reforms have changed demands.”

Williams believes that the greater scrutiny and focus on internal investigations in police departments are positive changes, but that they have “added another level of difficulty and complexity” when it comes to running a department, and may play a role in dissuading people from the profession.

But Kimberly Tobin, a criminal justice professor at Westfield State University, doesn’t believe that there are less people interested in serving in law enforcement. Instead, she said that there is simply a great amount of competition across agencies to fill the vacancies left by the mass turnover prompted by post-2020 reforms.

In fact, Tobin estimates that half of her incoming students this year are interested in serving in law enforcement in some capacity, and that their main concerns when it comes to these jobs have to do with safety, not increased accountability pressures. The difficulty for law enforcement agencies, Tobin said, comes when they must get candidates interested in working for them over a competitor, especially one that is bigger or more established.

“Now you have all of these agencies across all levels competing for people,” Tobin said. She noted that most agencies pull candidates from a list of candidates’ Civil Service exam scores.

“They’re all competing for the same crop of people off that list. … It’s hard when you’re competing with a federal agency.”

In the wake of the mass retirements that came with widespread police reform, Tobin has seen several students go straight from graduation to jobs working in law enforcement at the federal level, something she said “was unheard of even just a couple of years ago.” These students were quickly snapped up by agencies like the FBI or ICE, leaving slim pickings for local level departments.

In Tobin’s view, there aren’t fewer qualified candidates available, but rather a greater demand for them. For Northampton and Amherst, that demand elsewhere could help to explain their small applicant pools. As Easthampton begins its search to replace the recently retired Police Chief Robert Alberti, it may find itself faced with a similar situation.

Alexa Lewis can be reached at alewis@gazettenet.com.